From the 1930s to the 1950s, ‘doctors’ once lit up the pages of cigarette advertisements.

For a long time, physicians were the authority on health. Patients trusted in their doctors’ education and expertise and, for the most part, followed their advice. When health concerns about cigarettes began to receive public attention in the 1930s, tobacco companies took preemptive action. They capitalized on the public’s trust of physicians in order to quell concerns about the dangers of smoking. Thus was born the use of physicians in cigarette advertisements.

The pages of The New England Journal of Medicine and The Journal of the American Medical Association were home to many tobacco advertisements throughout the 1930s, 1940s and beyond. However, tobacco companies’ courtship of physicians did not end in medical journals.

Today: The truth of doctors recommendation was found to be a fatal flaw – driven by greed for money. It is a trust betrayed.

Tobacco accounts for one in 10 of all deaths globally, killing nearly 6 million people each year, including 600,000 nonsmokers who are exposed to second-hand smoke. Ending advertising, promotion and sponsorship of tobacco is an essential goal to cutting down on those deaths.

Globally there are around 1 billion smokers today, two-thirds of whom live in the following 15 low‐ and middle‐income countries (in order by number of smokers): China, India, Indonesia, Russia, Bangladesh, Brazil, Mexico, Turkey, Pakistan, Egypt, Ukraine, Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam and Poland. Without urgent action, deaths from tobacco could reach 8 million by 2030, more than 80 percent of which will be among people living in these low- and middle-income countries.

Keeping in mind that tobacco is the single most preventable cause of death on planet earth today, the World Health Organization unified the international community behind a global public health treaty, formally known as the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC).

The primary purpose of advertising, promotion and sponsorships is to encourage youth to begin smoking and to keep current users hooked. Children are three times more sensitive to tobacco marketing than adults and are more likely to be influenced to smoke by marketing than by their peers. In fact, almost 90 percent of smokers smoked their first cigarette before the age of 18, and almost 25 percent of these began smoking before the age of 10. Hence they form a primary target for the tobacco industry’s lethal marketing tactics. Eliminating Big Tobacco’s ability to market its deadly products can stop new users from joining the bandwagon, saving millions of lives in the process.

Big tobacco’s lethal marketing strategies date back to 1955 when Philip Morris, the producer of Marlboro cigarettes, introduced the image of the rugged cowboy—the famous Marlboro Man—which increased the sale of its filtered cigarettes by more than 3000 percent within one year. The Marlboro Man is an example of a global-marketing strategy that pushed Philip Morris International to become the industry leader.